I think most people ruin casting for young dogs before they’re ever old/good enough to really make you notice. It’s got to be genetic to a point but I don’t think there’s a “cast gene” I think there are dogs that have hunt and some dogs who would never go farther than the porch to look for a porkchop if they were starving.
I’ve seen it all too many times from friends and people we hunt with that ask how our dogs cast so good or say theirs won’t. Then I watch them let pups hang around, get impatient with dogs trying to work something and push them off of it, or they just put down and go to driving dogs without giving them a chance to leave. I see all of this now because there was a time when it was me who was that guy. If we weren’t catching hogs we were wasting time. Day I quit worrying about catching the hogs and started concerning myself with making the dogs, I started catching more hogs and.l the dogs got a lot better. I know one thing to be 100% true. Your dogs will never cast if you do not cast them.
We do not let dogs hang out, especially pups and yearlings. you get 1 chance to re cast. If not, you go back in the box. And very seldom will we send a dog that didn’t cast to a hog bayed by dogs that did. Pretty quick you’ll find out if that dog wants to go be a hunting dog, or if he’s just as cool with riding coat tails and In the dog box.
We send our dogs and sit on our butts. If they ain’t running one or bayed. We do not move. Don’t care if sketch comes back and in English tells me there isn’t a hog in 3 counties. If you hang out, you get put up, and we sit still till everything is back or we are bayed. And then we might load up, drive in a 2 minute circle and come cast them back out on the same spot.
https://vimeo.com/1046895753 there’s dogs bred all kinds of ways in there from 10 months to 10 + years old.
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